Naughty Dog on 'Stepping away' from Uncharted and the future beyond The Last Of Us Part 2

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy will release later this month on 22, August and we're confident that long time Uncharted fans are sure to still love the latest PS4 exclusive, despite its distinct lack of Nathan Drake leading the new adventure.

As we've already mentioned in our preview if you thought that Uncharted 4 was the end of the series simply because Drake decided to trade in his treasure map for a simpler life, you couldn't be more mistaken.

Thankfully we'd recently had the chance to not only play a portion of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy but also speak with the game's creative director and writer Shaun Escayg, as well as Naughty Dog's Director of Communications, Arne Meyer.

Together the pair helped build up a sense of why the studio chose to release The Lost Legacy as a standalone game (rather than DLC as originally was planned), why they opted against a story featuring Sam and Sullivan as well as how the games new leading ladies helped set the game apart from anything else in the Uncharted universe.

From the critically acclaimed developer, Naughty Dog, comes the adventure in the Uncharted series. Fan-favorite character, Chloe Frazer, must enlist the aid of renowned mercenary Nadine Ross from Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End in order to recover a fabled ancient Indian artifact and keep it out of the hands of a ruthless warmonger. Together, they’ll venture deep into the mountains of India in search of the legendary artifact. Along the way, they’ll learn to work together to unearth the mystery of the artifact, fight their way through fierce opposition, and prevent the region from falling into chaos.

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In The Lost Legacy, you show a slightly different side to Uncharted with this huge open-world area for the Western Ghats. It's the biggest open-space Naughty Dog has ever made. After the huge space you already created for Madagascar in Uncharted 4, is this indicative of maybe where the studio could go with games in the future? Less linear, more open?

Arne Meyer: So much of what we do with gameplay for Uncharted goes back to that core statement we mentioned before:

A character driven, action-adventure narrative, supported by the gameplay pillars of combat, traversal and problem-solving.

So when we were making Lost Legacy we realised we needed to support the narrative with this sense of discovery and that required a bigger scale, it required a bigger space.

We want to leave the door open [to open-worlds], and if the narrative demands it or if it fits into the narrative we’re not afraid of it.

You've mentioned a few times at E3 that the thieving world of Uncharted is huge- but even Nathan Drake at the end of 4 knew when to bow out. Will Naughty Dog ever do the same?

Shaun Escayg: You know it might be with this. it’s hard to tell. We’ve been so focused on The Last Legacy and we went gold the other week it's not really something we've thought about too much.

It's hard to tell what the future is for Naughty Dog, for Uncharted and for myself. There’s a lot of story we’ve yet to tell, but we may not be telling it.

“We’re perfectly happy to step away from Uncharted”

Arne Meyer

The fear for fans I guess, is now you’ve moved on from Drake, who was the series, you don't want it to come across as a watered down version, especially if it becomes this series of 'buddy' adventures with side characters.

Arne Meyer: Traditionally we approach every game as a separate project and even with Drake it was always if there’s another story to tell we’ll tell it, but only if it feels right and satisfying, and I think this holds here too with The Lost Legacy.

In the future, if it looks like there’s something that really excites us, great, but we’re perfectly happy to step away from it.

This is a really interesting point in the studio’s history because you’ve kinda called time on Uncharted and once you’ve eventually finished on Last of Us 2 - which I know is a long way off - the studio will pretty much have this blank slate.

Are there areas with which Naughty Dog might be interested in exploring? Is everyone buzzing with ideas?

Shaun Escayg: The entire studio is like that, everyone wants to try something new. There are so many new ideas, it's the culture at Naughty Dog, we love ideas.

The studio right now is just teeming with new content and new ideas building up new worlds, new genres. it's a constant melting pot of new ideas.

Arne, I remember you saying a while back that Naughty Dog wasn't a two game studio. Everyone is by-en-large at work on one project at a time. So, presumably, everyone now moves onto The Last of Us 2. Knowing there's that moment on the horizon after The Last of Us 2, surely you've got to have some people beavering away on solidifying ideas for that next game.

Arne Meyer: So, we can pretty much say the whole studio will be focussed on The Last of Us Part Two once this is over.

At some point, parts of the team that will try to figure out what's next and how that goes when The Last of Us Part Two is full production.

We'll see if there are potential resources to spare which can go into that discovery period, but it's hard to tell now.

A lot of people went straight from The Last of Us, straight into Uncharted 4, straight into Lost Legacy and those guys need a vacation.

And because we started really early on with The Last of Us Part Two it'll take a while for people in the studio to figure out what's next, where do we go next and which projects we want to think about ... so, if you’re holding out for UnKarted you could be waiting some time.